An oil company in Cleveland, a German recipe and a family name on the bottle.

Murphy Oil Soap is an American brand of household cleaner for wood surfaces, and it began inside an industrial oil business in Cleveland, Ohio. The Encyclopedia of Cleveland History, published by Case Western Reserve University, says the company behind it was organized in 1889 as the Phoenix Oil Co. and incorporated in 1890. Its early trade was lubricants: the encyclopedia lists oils for valves, cylinders, dynamos, machines and harnesses, sold under a Green Seal label from a plant in the Cleveland neighbourhood of Newburgh.

The soap arrived through the Murphy family. The encyclopedia says that by 1910 the company was directed by Jeremiah T. Murphy, who reportedly bought the idea for the soap from a German immigrant. The Plain Dealer, in an obituary of his grandson published on 21 April 2009, says Jeremiah T. Murphy started Phoenix Oil Co. in the Cleveland Flats in 1890 and turned a German recipe into Murphy Oil Soap in 1905. English Wikipedia gives 1910 as the year the product was introduced.

The encyclopedia describes the product as basically a potassium soap of vegetable oil, and says it was initially demonstrated and sold in hardware and department stores. For years it was only one part of the business. The company went on making metal-working oils and compounds for industrial customers, moved to a new Cleveland plant by 1939, and in 1966 built a plant in Madison, Ohio, to make concrete-curing compounds for road construction.

In 1968 the firm changed its name to the Murphy-Phoenix Co. The encyclopedia says the new name reflected a business split roughly evenly between its household cleaner, then sold regionally, and its industrial compounds. The Murphy name, already on the bottle, now sat on the company too.

From a regional Ohio cleaner to a national brand, and then to Colgate-Palmolive.

In 1968, the encyclopedia says, the soap was still distributed regionally. The Encyclopedia of Cleveland History says that in the early 1970s Murphy-Phoenix began losing household-cleaner sales to national brands, and responded with a marketing strategy built around the soap’s loyal regional following. That campaign, the encyclopedia says, turned Murphy’s Oil Soap into a national product. By 1980 the company had moved its offices to Beachwood, and it added a manufacturing plant in Solon in 1984.

The Plain Dealer credits much of that expansion to Murlan J. “Jerry” Murphy, Jeremiah’s grandson, who spent 45 years with the family business and became its president and chairman. The paper’s 2009 obituary says he funded a few low-cost commercials that caught on, took the soap nationwide one region per year from 1976 to 1986, and developed a spray version. English Wikipedia’s article on him says his five children joined the business in the early 1970s.

In 1991 the family sold. The encyclopedia records that the Murphy-Phoenix Co. was purchased that year by Colgate-Palmolive of New York, and Colgate-Palmolive’s own corporate history lists “1991: Colgate acquires Murphy Oil Soap.” The Plain Dealer notes that the family sold the domestic soap but kept other products in Cleveland. English Wikipedia names two businesses formed to carry on the industrial chemical lines, JTM Products in Solon and CheMasters in Madison, both owned by members of the Murphy family.

Colgate-Palmolive has owned Murphy Oil Soap since 1991. The encyclopedia says that soon after the sale Colgate closed the Murphy-Phoenix offices, and that in 1996 executives announced production would shift from Solon to Colgate’s plant in Cambridge, Ohio; by the end of that year Murphy-Phoenix had ceased operations in Cuyahoga County. Colgate-Palmolive’s history page says the range has since grown to include all-purpose cleaners, sprays and wipes.

Design and documentation.

Household-care brands live on the shelf under the sink as much as in the shop, and their packaging has to work in both places. A polish aerosol, a box of trash bags and a bottle of soap each carry a name, a colour and a few words of instruction, and the label is often the only piece of design a buyer handles every week. The same name may sit on a can, a refill pouch, a carton and a spray bottle, so the identity has to hold together across very different shapes and materials.

Many of these names have changed hands over the years, passing between family firms, larger consumer-goods groups and new owners, while the label on the pack stays familiar. That makes the plain questions worth asking: who started the brand, who owns it now and when that changed, and how its bottles, cans and boxes have been drawn over time.

Each guide separates what independent, dated sources record from what the company says about itself, and marks plainly where a statement rests only on the company’s own word.

A family surname, a question in the commercials and a short verb on the website.

Murphy Oil Soap’s identity is built on a surname. The product was named for the family that ran the company, and the company itself took the name Murphy-Phoenix in 1968. The brand’s current website, published by Colgate-Palmolive, keeps that name at the centre and registers it as a trademark, presenting the products under the line “Household Cleaners for Wood Surfaces.”

Television turned the name into a question. The Plain Dealer, in its 21 April 2009 obituary of Jerry Murphy, recalled that the old commercials for the soap ended with the line “Is there a real Mr. Murphy?” The paper answered that there had been several real Mr. Murphys behind the product over the decades, and that Jerry Murphy was the one who took it nationwide. The family name also appears outside the bottle: the same obituary records that a chapel he funded at St. Ignatius High School carries a Latin inscription, Quam Lavatio Fecit, which the paper translates as “That Which Soap Has Made.”

Under Colgate-Palmolive the brand speaks in a shorter, more playful voice. The website signs off with the slogan “If you love it, Murphy it,” using the surname as a verb, and its product menu leads with three names: Murphy Original Formula, an Orange Oil Spray and Squirt & Mop. Alongside the products the site runs articles on wood furniture, hardwood floors and seasonal home care.

The early history adds a quieter visual thread. The Encyclopedia of Cleveland History says the Phoenix Oil Co. sold its lubricants under a Green Seal label and initially sold the soap through hardware and department stores. In 1968 the company folded the family name into its own, becoming Murphy-Phoenix, so that the soap and the firm shared a name.

For a design guide, Murphy Oil Soap shows how a family surname, a single line of advertising copy and a fixed subject, wood, can carry a household brand through a change of owner; compare it with Colgate, the brand of the company that has owned it since 1991, and with Pledge, another American brand for furniture care. For this guide we use walnut brown, oil gold and pale ash with a slab serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Murphy Oil Soap’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.